


grab bag

by soulpoweredhellcat



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Gen, pearlrose kisses, temporary tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 09:52:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4560123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulpoweredhellcat/pseuds/soulpoweredhellcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of drabbles, some angsty & others sweet, some explicit & others exploring sex-repulsed themes, etc. all steven universe!<br/>will edit as necessary<3</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Now?"

Steven popped a little, pink tongue out of his pursed lips and hummed idly. Pudgy fingers worked busily worked to hold a wet rag onto Peridot's green flesh, while the other set attempted simultaneously peeling the veneer from another tattoo. "How about now?" The nasally voice inquired impatiently mere seconds afterward.  
  
"Ummm. Here, lemme check." The prepubescent kid's voice cracked as he thoughtfully mumbled the words and dropped the unopened tattoo; he lifted the dripping rag and checked Peridot's tattoo-in-progress, soon grinning toothily at his jade-faced companion. "Yup!" He ripped the white piece of paper away and let it flutter to the wood-paneled floor, where several other unopened tattoos lay. "It's perfect."  
  
Wiggling and craning her neck to see this 'perfect' design printed onto her shoulder, she scowled. " _Wh_ \--you call _this_ perfect? Mugh! This human technology is phony! Downright defective!" Her cylinder fingers reached to scrape at the spotty, stretched-looking dogcopter (he looked the most worthy, according to the gem). "Grrrhnnn. Steven! Help me! Remove it immediately!" The young boy's bushy eyebrows worriedly came together. He hadn't expected an outburst.  
  
"Uhh, uh." Steven, hold his hands up semi-defensively, pulled his bottom lip between his teeth while he thought. "Okay, okay! Shhh, hold on." The shrieking and frantic clawing from Peridot's end continued, if not amplified.

"This is poisonous! It must be! I knew it!! I _knew_ I shouldn't have put my trust in  _The Conniving Steven_!" As Peridot spat, her sharp teeth were showcased, and her shoulder became a deeper green as her fingers created ruts. "Curse you, human!" She pointed at him with fingers not stationed at the mangled dogcopter image. "Reverse this!!!"  
  
"No, no. It's fine! I can wash it off!" Steven tried as he leaned away from the accusing fingers, scrambling off the worn couch. The uneven floorboards creaked noisily under his bare soles, which headed for the kitchen. He had to reach for the sink's dish soap on his tippy-toes, however. Darn his tall gem guardians!  
  
By the time he reached the nook under his bedroom, chaotic with Peridot's meltdown, he was red-in-the-face, and the warm, soapy napkin he grasped was creating a bubbly trail beneath his feet. "H-hey! Peridot, wait! Don't do that!" His oval eyes widened at Peridot's rancorous display. There she sat, stomping her clunky boots on the flooring with loud, repetitive  _thump-_ ing, squeezing her eyes shut too tightly to be healthy, and scraping at the almost unidentifiable dogcopter tattoo.  
  
Her eyes flew open whenever Steven tried peeling the fingers from her left shoulder. "Hands off, beef clod!" She'd recently become aware of Steven's humanity, and for him, she'd dropped the use of simple "soil clod" in favor of something more colorful and accurate, in her opinion. The gem's green face wrenched itself into a pained, frustrated expression, and her crystalline gaze clouded, curiously glazing over.. Steven retracted. He duplicated Peridot's commonly-used "m" mouth shape.  
  
Was Peridot going to cry?   
  
"No sass,  _regular_ clod!" Steven combatted. His hands propped themselves on his hips, his cheeks puffed, and his gaze hardened. "I changed my mind about hurting you! S-uh-so, let me scrub the rest of the.. horrible human dogcopter toxins off of your skin! Before this gets _reeeeaally_ serious." The young gem had deepened his voice to generate some firmness for the teary-eyed homeworlder. To re-affirm this, he nodded. By her sniffles, though, Steven knew she was already long-gone into weepyworld.  
  
Her deep green-clad shoulders caved toward her shoulders and quaked. Dropping the façade, Steven crawled toward on his knees once more and cautiously touched the lukewarm, soap-doused rag to whatever was left of the temporary tattoo. She didn't react much, except to defiantly turn her gaze and wrinkle her spotted nose. He didn't know what to do! He didn't know if she would snap at him for asking, either, but he figured that he should at least try. Maybe Peridot needed someone to talk with. Maybe she missed home and just needed a friend, like Lapis did.

Once the tattoo was removed from her raw shoulder, he sat forward and set the rag on the coffee table. His sandal-ed feet kicked anxiously at the side of the couch. "Please don--" The quietly-offered olive branch was snapped in half by a venomous hiss from the ladygem turned away from him.

"Leave me alone! I don't need _you_ , your sick toxoids, or your lousy _rebel_ cohorts! Just-!" A peeved growl sounded, and from his spot a cushion away, he could see her digits twitching anxiously against the couch's cloth. "Leave me alone," she ended, quieter this time. Leftover tears from her anger-induced crying pooled at the ends of her damp cheeks and her chin. Steven wanted to mutter a 'sorry' or an 'ok', but he kept the apology to himself, fearing that he would somehow upset her further.   
  
As he stared at the painting on the wall, he couldn't help but wonder what his mom would do and grimaced at the pretty portrait. She would be able to help Peridot more than he could.  
  
He definitely wasn't his mother, not like everyone wanted him to be. He was only.. Steven.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rosepearl! js writing in my perspectives on how they see homeworld, one another, & then a romantic diddy.

"Do you think we can see it from here?"

A pair of crystal-laced, baby blue orbs traced the sky and its millions of clustered, pink-white dots; Pearl felt like she could extend her milky fingertips toward the vast expanse and reach into its innumerable depths again, like she had before. She was not sure what she would give, or if she even would trade that world for this one anymore. Maybe, if there was a way to accomplish it without facing the loss of her comrades.. without facing the loss of her leader, specifically, she would not hesitate.

"Yes," a warm voice affirmed.

Pearl pensively dragged a tongue along her mouth, wondering which speck her old home was and how hard it'd be to pursue her dreamy craving to pluck it from earth's jet black, midnight canvas. Feeling a set of starry eyes on her, now, she turned her head and caught the half-lidded stare of a moonlit, pink-haired woman. It left a warm, sleepy feeling in her gut and a quaint smile on her thin lips before her auburn head lolled toward the sky once more.

Oh, how homesick. But she'd take Rose Quartz over her birthplace anyday, for sure, and she knew this would never be as debatable as she liked to make it sound. Feeling toasty fingers tickle her own, she offered her palm and accepted a pastel hand, lacing hers and her favorite gem's fingers together against the icy sand. However, she couldn't feel the cold; she never felt cold whenever she was with Rose.

Now, it was the Quartz's turn to pose a gently-spoken question. "Do you want to kiss every star you see, too?" They were all so beautiful from Earth; how could one not want to relinquish an affectionate peck to every dapple making the galaxy so wonderful and boundless and gorgeous. Every single one she could see was so unique, like the humans and the rest of this planet's natives. She doubted Pearl felt similarly, but she felt passionately. Her shiny lips parted, as she was awestruck once more by the perfection of the universe. Not that this _wasn't_ a sensation she felt often.

These planets (stars) in the distance were not Earth-friendly; some, most definitely, were Homeworld-subjugated. They could shred her favorite place into a million pieces within moments via the lift of a finger, but she loved them, regardless. She was once part of their community. She empathized with one of her first loves--the love she had before she met Earth, Homeworld. Expressing her perpetual and ineffable understanding to Pearl, even for her long-gone rivals, made her feel better. She felt as if Pearl didn't relate, but Pearl managed comprehension and acceptance anyway. 

She could not dream of more than just that: acceptance. After all, not every gem so readily praised her opponent, the source of everyone's strife and loss. Her long-lashed gaze fluttered a few times up at the sky before flickering toward Pearl to catch her reaction. She appeared hazy, still. It was a contrast to her normal demeanor.

"No," she finally replied; her tone was more coherent than Rose might have assumed. "I don't want to kiss them." Pearl preferred the idea of smothering those planet-stars taunting her in the distance. She wanted to roll them between thumb-and-forefinger before squeezing until they popped, deflating into nothing. To her, they were hollow, unfulfilled desires of her old home and space, and they were much more difficult to kill than she liked to think. 

Rose fully expected it. She hummed faintly and offered Pearl's frail hand a comforting squeeze. "I know." She paused, watching Pearl tense and clutch her pink hand tautly during a wave of visible emotion. Her words must have been more reckless than she thought they would be; she couldn't fathom the emotions whipping through Pearl. Earth was Pearl's home, but Pearl missed the home she knew; it was the home she left for Rose Quartz.

No matter how much Rose Quartz begged Pearl to do this for herself and to find personal wealth with the cause of Earth, she insisted on doing it for _her_ and _her_ only. They had gotten into arguments about it several times in the past, when the war was among them. It troubled the white-clad gem who continued gazing worriedly at her anxiety-claimed counterpart before deciding on a course of action. "Pearl," began she, with her tone dressed in velvet.

"Yes?" Thin eyebrows pulled together on Pearl's circular face as she turned her head to examine the watchful pink. Upon realizing Rose had been watching her for quite a while by then, or she must have, a blue blush tinted her plain, colorless cheeks, and she fidgeted, digging a bone-y elbow into the chilled grass as she sat up. A wide, toothy grin spread Rose's plump, shiny lips apart before the corkscrew-haired woman repeated herself.

" _My_ Pearl." A dose of fondess fell into the two words. 

"I..." Opening her mouth and then closing it, the aforementioned Pearl trailed. 

Snowy dress crumpling over her folded legs, Rose accompanied Pearl in sitting up and offered her other hand. She had to make sure that her favorite pearl knew this; Pearl needed to know that her independence was deeply important to Rose, even if it was the hundreth time they walked through the topic of Pearl's hardcore devotion. Unsurely, Pearl settled a second hand into her Quartz's before glancing upward at her sheepishly. She was not positive what to expect, but she did know that every touch from Rose Quartz was like a jolt of electricity.

"You are so, so much more capable than you think you are," genuinely murmured Rose, who was affectionately grasping both of Pearl's hands and looking her in the face. If only she could get Pearl's attention and make her understand. "You, Pearl, are an endless sea of possibilities and talent. You have shown me that you are capable of awesome things, so please, _please_ don't let me hold you from your independence, not anymore." 

This provoked a pang of anguish within Pearl. She knew what Rose meant; she didn't want to dispose of Pearl, and Pearl had wept and hurt more than singularly for this topic. Why did it always feel like Rose was dismissing Pearl? It was an all-too-familiar gutting sensation. Rose might as well have jutted a finger into the lithe gem and carved her heart out single-handedly, with those mere words. As her chest and throat burned and threatened tears, Pearl shook her head and desperately wrenched Rose a bit closer by the hands.

"Rose! How could you say that, when you led me to my independence? Without you, I would be nowehere!" More specifically, she'd be no one. This time, her hands grasped for Rose's upper forearms and jerked her even nearer. "Don't do this to me, Rose! I.. I--You can replace me. You can do whatever you want to do, but please, don't leave me," she whined. As pathetic as her dependence sounded, this was panic mode for Pearl.  

"I fought for you. I would do anything for you. This, right here and now, is the life we planned, .. together!" The weariness of Pearl's eyes began to show per thick, fatigued discoloration accented by a suffocating anxiety, and to Rose, it was obvious that this conversation wasn't going anywhere productive. Pearl could not see anything past her dependence; it ruined Rose Quartz's insides to see the raw truth yet _another_ time.

Guidance from authorities was all Pearl knew. She needed to feel wanted and productive and important; otherwise, she functioned not, and Rose played her outlet, her idol on a pedastool. Independence was bad news for Pearl. Her worry flourished, and her rambling budded into a reaction even more unhealthy. How could she convince her that she shouldn't leave? How could she make an undeniable point? Mind racing, Pearl released her forearms and cupped the cheeks of a bewildered Quartz. "I, I love you! W-wait! I.. can show you, Rose! Here!" 

Her lips and Rose's lips sealing was not unlike a treat to the sensations or a trip into Nirvana, and Rose seemed lost in that sugar-glazed maze as well, by the way she obliged. During a brief depature, she spoke a hurried, whispery, "See??" to the wide-eyed rebel leader who grasped for her sides, as if trying to stablize herself with them. Yes. Yes, she should do that again. They should try it a second time. "I love you," she ended, offering a smile.

"Did you feel that?" An enormous smile found Rose's mouth after she asked, and then Pearl's mouth found it too, inviting itself to press up against Rose's again and again in a rush of heat.


End file.
